Ill Luck Trifolium
by frooit
Summary: St. Paddy's day, Saint Patrick's day, Saint drink yourself pissfaced.


**ill luck trifolium**

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St. Paddy's day, Saint Patrick's day, Saint drink yourself piss-faced and trip over your brother's legs because stopping and thinking, that takes effort. Disorientation has its taste in blinking and nearly falling face first. Connor steadies, his arms out for balance, just inches, not feet, continues on blinking, and then notices this isn't home. Well, not nearly. They've been making it a tradition to have bad luck on St. Paddy's, you know, despite the national promise of it being nothing but good. So this is all about right. Fits perfectly and square and fucking _headache_—Jesus and Mother Mary—into everything. Three sides of a spoiled clover.

Last year's, Murph broke his arm falling from a fire escape. Rusted bars and buckling screws he didn't notice until it wobbled, he wobbled, and Connor caught just enough out of the corner of his eye for his heart to swell into his throat and his knees to lock solid, snap. That split second thing, hands and elbows. A rash of cool sweat down the spine. _Adrenaline_. Leaving you shaky and weak when it's gone. It's ironic that he's the one to come out with the lack of luster for going back on the roof, _a_ roof, height now.

Murphy fell a storey, missed the iron poles and trash and broken glass from whatever, wherever—that wasn't the point, the point is—_he missed them_, but broke an arm. His right, with a 'clean' fracture. Went one storey down and none the wiser but cursed like a sailor (even more appropriately like an _Irishman_). They say broken bones mend all the stronger, but Murphy wouldn't have any of that. Sulking wasn't what he was doing, he was brewing, boiling, smoking his insides grey like the day that was, waiting for his amends and the joints to bend right again. That his cast had been green was fucking mocking, he said. That was last year in an apartment they've been thrown out of _this_ year. Look at that brilliant, golden luck. Blazing their cares away.

"Get..." Murphy's awake.

"Shh." He meant _shut it_, but his mouth didn't quite react.

Murphy glares sideways up at him (_bleary_ just covering it). The afghan from Rocco's couch, because that's where this is, is wrapped around his shoulders, his neck. He's got his fingers poking through the breaks there, twisting them around to rub at his face. He groans and arches.

"Wha' time's it?"

"Fuck if I know, what do I look like?"

"Someone woke up on the wrong side of the floor... Ya look like Lord and Master of carpet burn."

"Aye, thanks. I'm not the one who stole the sofa."

"Didn't steal it." Shoulders turning away so his voice comes slightly muffled, drifting. Gives Connor time to scowl and click his jaw, suck his teeth. Murphy's standing far too steadily for how much he drowned down last night. Shot after shot and a blinding grin Connor couldn't glance away from. It was infectious, as was the cheer, the beer, the alcohol. Not nearly a tilt here now, just a sway and some dented hair. His eyes look clear, leveled wet blue, but not yet wide. There's some consolation.

"I think most of that Guinness went down yer front."

"Oh," Murph stumbles climbing over and around the piles of clothes (their's and Rocco's), trash and bottles, cigarette packs, opened cans of mysterious, sans-lable food product, and a few magazines (all of which, no doubt, are porn—Connor can see the curving swell of a pale breast from here) just to get a few feet closer. "Yer just a sore lightweight, Mister MacManus. Where are my..." He pats his pockets, front and back.

"Smoked 'em all at the pub."

"Fuck that, had one left. Was saving it."

"Rocco did, then." And he's still standing where he's at, running fingers through his hair, feebly, if anything, trying to pull the tangles and the fuzz and all else from it. Floor's fucking filthy, grainy wherever you put your hand and he'd slept on the thing. Correction, he'd passed out on the thing. Needs a nice, long, hot, and oh will it be hot, shower, he does. If he doesn't have to wrestle Murph for it first, that is. Doesn't have the wildest confidence he'd win either. Even so, as he separates a mat of cat fur from his hair (oh, that's swell, that) and scowls just another scowl.

"What did I do last night?"

Murphy's voice and both their question. That gets Connor's legs moving to bring him side by side.

Apart from drinking, howling, tipping over bar stools, head-butting some stranger (and a possible plural), biting his tongue (interesting story), and breathing nicotine from several different noses, nothing unusual. Murphy's knuckles are raw and Connor's jaw feels swollen thick, and that could be a black eye stinging his cheek. Murphy licks his lips. By the look, or just assumption on Connor's side (he's got a swollen jaw and Murph a bruised mouth), he tastes blood.

"I dunno."

"Good. Happy St. Patrick's."

He can't help himself, he grins this time. "Aye."


End file.
